The biggest victim of the Three Gorges Dam: Shanghai?

Research from Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) presented yesterday on the ecological and environmental impacts of the Three Gorges Dam concluded that Shanghai will suffer the most from the project’s consequences.

Pollution in the Yangtze river, seawater intrusion and coastal erosion have all been intensified by the dam’s construction, the report read, while the ecosystem of the Yangtze estuary as well as the East Sea fishing industry have both been seriously harmed.

As seawater continues to encroach nearer the city, usable freshwater and sentiment are both decreasing. “Sediment is a very important resource for Shanghai,” the national scientific think tank noted, “making the land expand by an average of 40 meters each year.” Now that mud and sand subside in reservoir at the upper reaches, however, sediment isn’t reaching the estuary.

“There are no benefits for Shanghai,” Professor Chen Guojie of the CAS’s Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment said bluntly of the RMB248 billion engineering feat.